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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27260590">A Friend In Need</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow'>entanglednow</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>13 Days of Halloween [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Banter, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Haunted Houses, M/M, Menace, Mystery</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 09:34:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,800</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27260590</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Aziraphale promises that he'll look into some strange disappearances. He finds a house that feels very wrong indeed.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>13 Days of Halloween [11]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977847</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>119</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>355</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Friend In Need</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the 'Haunt' prompt, for the 13 Days of Halloween list of prompts, made by racketghost.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It's a four bedroom, detached house - so detached in fact that it feels almost ostracized from the other houses in the village, as if they'd spent the last few decades slowly creeping away from it. </p>
<p>Though there's nothing about the exterior that stands out as an obvious sign of supernatural infestation, Aziraphale can't help but feel like there's an unwelcoming air to it. A subtle suggestion that isn't quite rot but feels like fertile ground for it to grow.</p>
<p>Something is wrong with the house.</p>
<p>Madame Tracy admitted that, to her knowledge, nothing had ever happened in there - and a quick search through its history confirmed as much. It was simply a large house in a nice area that had been empty since 1995. No one wanted to live there. The last few families that had moved in had left within a month. Most people in the village accepted without question that the place was haunted. Even the young people, who'd normally be the first to investigate an empty house, finding the risk of ghosts more perk than deterrent, stayed away.</p>
<p>But, once or twice a year, someone would disappear from the village, or from the area around the village. And if you looked a bit harder, widened your search, you'd discover that it was more than one or two people. Tradesmen, road workers, engineers, the occasional person just passing through, they never made it out the other side.</p>
<p>The house stayed empty, no one ever moved in after the last, though there were a few half-hearted showings, a few glossy pictures taken and pinned in estate agent windows. Nothing ever came of it.</p>
<p>Sometimes the front door of the house would be wide open, and the missing person's belongings would be found inside. But, other than that, the house would be empty, no evidence to be found, no suspect to be followed up on, time and time again.</p>
<p>Madame Tracy might not have ever gotten involved, but then the daughter of someone she knew had gone missing in the village.</p>
<p>
  <i>"I'm not going to call Iona a nice girl, I hate the way that's the first thing they always say, as if we should care less if a rude girl goes missing. So no, she wasn't a nice girl, but she was smart and sensible. She always told people where she was going. She wouldn't have gone into any supposedly haunted house in a village she didn't know. And she'd have told you where to go if you tried to make her."</i>
</p>
<p>Madame Tracy had told Aziraphale she was just passing the information along, since it sounded like the sort of mystery he might be able to solve once and for all. She'd asked him to look into it. Or, to be more accurate, she'd hinted and suggested until he'd agreed to take a look for her. It was the least he could do after what she'd done for him after all.</p>
<p>The garden is overgrown, but certainly not almost thirty years worth. Perhaps someone was taking care of it?</p>
<p>"There's nothing in the garden, I've looked."</p>
<p>Aziraphale is more than a little embarrassed at the sound he lets out. Honestly, he'd been quite distracted by the trellis against the house and hadn't registered that the front door was already open. Crowley is a stretch of long limbs in black fabric against the door frame, ankles crossed, sunglasses shining in the streetlight.</p>
<p>"Checked it when I got here."</p>
<p>"Crowley, what are you doing here?" Aziraphale asks. "I wasn't aware that you kept in touch with Madame Tracy?"</p>
<p>"I don't, keep in touch with you though, don't I?" There's a bob of head that manages to take in Aziraphale's entire form. "Enough to catch you sneaking off to a house full of ghosts in the middle of the night."</p>
<p>"I was not 'sneaking off,'" Aziraphale protests. "It simply seemed the best time of day for it. And besides, it's not as if the dead pose a threat to either of us."</p>
<p>Crowley makes a rude noise, indicating that his point still stands. Then he turns and heads inside without him, the absolute villain.</p>
<p>Aziraphale heads up the steps after him, and the moment he crosses the threshold it becomes clear that something is indeed very wrong here. There's an unpleasant taste to the air, something left out too long, forgotten and festering in the dark. Perhaps not demonic but something with the same craving, the same desire. It's certainly something corrupt that shouldn't be here. </p>
<p>He lets his grace expand a little, to light the dark corners of the room, perhaps to poke at and reveal any unwanted thing that might be squatting here.</p>
<p>"Oi, do you mind?" Crowley has a hand raised, the expression on his face quietly pained at the ethereal light.</p>
<p>Aziraphale feels guilty immediately. "Oh, of course, terribly sorry." He must have been illuminating more than he'd intended. He packs his ethereal essence down a touch more, leaving simply the soft glow of his halo to ward off anything that tries to interfere with his person.</p>
<p>"So what's this ghost supposed to do then?" Crowley asks, tugging open a broken cabinet and peering inside. "Bleeding walls, screaming at night, moving chairs, that sort of thing?"</p>
<p>Aziraphale fills him in as they carefully move from room to room. There's no specific place that the atmosphere is emanating from. It's the same no matter where they explore, as if the house itself has picked up an ill air. It's almost a physical thing, like walking through cobwebs and leaving them curled sticky and unpleasant to his clothes. He dislikes the feeling immensely.</p>
<p>But when he asks if Crowley can pinpoint it more accurately, the demon just shrugs and shakes his head.</p>
<p>Most of the furniture from downstairs is gone, there's one sad armchair and a few dining chairs, the kitchen cupboards and cabinets, an old and empty fridge-freezer, the door hanging open to expose a grubby and spiderwebbed interior.</p>
<p>Crowley shoves his hands in his pockets, sways in a way that feels irritated while Aziraphale investigates the larder.</p>
<p>"Maybe it is just the house to blame? Maybe some sort of ritual corrupted the land underneath us, seeped into the brickwork?" Crowley suggests.</p>
<p>Aziraphale looks up from a drawer full of spoons he'd just discovered. "Like Borley Rectory? That was far more active, and never disappeared anyone to my knowledge."</p>
<p>"Man-eating house wouldn't be the weirdest thing we've encountered." Crowley wanders back into the hall, stops to consider himself in a mirror with an unhappy expression.</p>
<p>"Disappointingly true," Aziraphale agrees. There's something he's missing here, something that's wrong that he simply isn't noticing, no matter how hard he concentrates on the house and its decor. The feel of it, the smell of it - it doesn't feel like the whole of the thing, it feels more like a symptom, something layered over and over by a presence he's not finding.</p>
<p>They head upstairs.</p>
<p>The oppressive atmosphere is tangible now, and with his grace tucked away its affecting his corporation more than he'd like. He feels light-headed, skin prickling unpleasantly. He's either going to have to ask Crowley to leave so he can cleanse the area, or he's going to have to head outside for a few minutes of air before they continue.</p>
<p>If only he'd been able to get a feel for the house while completely open. He's sure he would have spotted something.</p>
<p>Honestly, Crowley normally waits for him -</p>
<p>Aziraphale is suddenly reminded of Iona Talbot. What was it Tracy had said? Not the sort of girl to go into a strange, abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. What reason could she possibly have had to come inside the house? Unless it was at the request of someone she trusted. Someone she would have followed inside without question.</p>
<p>Someone who made her vulnerable. Perhaps the only person who made her vulnerable.</p>
<p>Aziraphale's headache is unpleasant now, and he feels like he's breathing cold fog. Crowley circles the room behind him, he seems to have registered Aziraphale's discomfort, and he moves closer to his right shoulder, as if to shield him, though something about that is wrong. The demon's boots make hard noises on the wooden floor. </p>
<p>Aziraphale can't remember Crowley's walk ever being so loud.</p>
<p>"Something wrong, angel?"</p>
<p>The room is suddenly cold, as everything inside Aziraphale says <i>protect yourself</i>, and for a moment he doesn't know why.</p>
<p>
  <i>Angel.</i>
</p>
<p>The softness of six thousand years of companionship, the teasing edges, the faint guilty affection, the indulgence in putting meaning into something that should just be a bland description. The patience that says 'as long as you need' and 'as much as you're comfortable with.'</p>
<p>That word holds none of it. It's all missing. There's no feeling in that word at all. It's as flat and as dead as the sound of Crowley's boots on floorboards. Because they are just boots, and not the sculpted edges of scales. </p>
<p>And the demon never stands to his right.</p>
<p>Whatever is behind him...</p>
<p>...it's not Crowley.</p>
<p>Aziraphale stares at the wall as the thing that looks like the demon he loves moves closer, with a swaying walk that knows he's supposed to be a snake but has never lived as one.</p>
<p>"Wondering if there's something in the paint." Aziraphale sounds distracted, because he is. </p>
<p>He supposes he should be afraid, that this thing was clever enough to fool him, and strong enough to pull off the demon's aura in a way that could only have come from rifling around inside his head. </p>
<p>But mostly he's just very, very angry.</p>
<p>
  <i>How dare you.</i>
</p>
<p>Aziraphale turns just a little, enough to keep the thing in the room with him in view, and then throws himself wide open and uses everything he has to smite the whole building.</p>
<p>When the light fades, and the dust settles, there's nothing beside him but a charred patch on the floor. The oppressive atmosphere is gone, the house has been scoured clean of whatever menaced it, leaving the bracing chill of cold air and the glow of artificial light behind.</p>
<p>"Unforgivable," he says simply, and steps over the dark stain.</p>
<p>The house has an old-fashioned telephone. It shouldn't work but Aziraphale needs it to and so it does.</p>
<p>Crowley answers on the second ring.</p>
<p>"Aziraphale, what's up?" The demon sounds as if he'd just woken from a nap, voice throaty but pushing for something alert. Aziraphale squeezes the telephone until it creaks. He'd been absolutely <i>certain</i> but hearing Crowley's voice is still a relief so strong it leaves him gasping air. How did it take him so long to realise?</p>
<p>"Are you in the mood for company?" he asks, because he's suddenly desperate for it.</p>
<p>"For you, angel, always."</p>
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